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Does ASL have the same grammatical rules as spoken English?

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No. Sign languages may be influenced to various degrees by the dominant spoken language where they are used (like minority languages generally are), but their core structures are always very different. Just to scrape the surface just barely, here are some examples from ASL and English. read more

As far as word order is concerned, I don't know very much about ASL, and although I know you are probably far more interested in ASL than any other sign language, one example from German Sign Language (DGS) can show you how radically different the grammar of DGS is from the grammar of German. read more

ASL does have grammar rules, just like English. But just like English, ASL has a lot of flexibility and variation allowing for different possibilities of sentence structure. So I could tell you of some general grammatical tendencies that ASL has, but this would not be enough to help you learn the language. read more

New grammar rules come into existence when enough members of the group have spoken (signed) their language a particular way often enough and long enough that it would seem odd to speak the language in some other way. American Sign Language is tied to the Deaf Community. We use our language in a certain way. read more

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